Pearl's Hill City Park climbs away from Chin Swee like a green apology for all the concrete below. I go up after dusk when the frogs begin — not for exercise, not for views, but because the railing along the upper path has a texture that slows my fingers and therefore my thoughts.
The railing is painted green and worn to silver at the bends where hands have rested. I think of all the palms that griped it on wet evenings like this one. Mine added another layer of warmth. Below, the city carried on its business — buses threading Outram, windows blinking on in staggered sequence — but up here the sound thinned to frogs and the occasional runner who did not want to be spoken to.
Halfway up I stopped at the bench that faces neither east nor west but some compromise direction the planner chose. A couple passed speaking Mandarin softly about school fees. A dog pulled its owner toward a bush. Ordinary fragments. I let them pass through me without collecting them.
What the railing heard, if railings hear: my breathing after the steeper flight; the zip of my jacket; the muttered count of steps I pretend not to keep. It heard me pause longer than necessary at the lookout where the CBD lights begin. It heard me not take a photograph because some slopes resist being flattened into pixels.
On the descent my knees complained in the polite way knees complain. The path delivered me back toward Chin Swee with damp shoes and a head cleared of the small irritations that sent me up in the first place. The railing continued its work for the next climber. I went home and made tea I did not finish.